Ethiopian Ayat Real Estate major shareholder released, Cheif still in custody
- Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 21:12
- Business, Domestic Affairs
- 1,670 views
- 2 comments
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Ayat Real Estate Enterprise major shareholder Ayalew Tessema is out on bail after spending more than a week in police custody on tax evasion charges.
However, Ayele Debela, known as IMF for his lending business, remains in custody.
Flexing its muscle after the reform that merged two former agencies, the Ministry of Revenues and Customs Authority has made several high profile arrests in recent months.
The authority arrested Ayat chief, Ayele Debela, and six other individuals two weeks earlier, accusing them of deliberate tax evasion.
With the consent of Federal First Instance Court of Arada Bench the authority has kept the suspects in custody for the last two weeks for investigations and brought them back to court on Thursday seeking extra days of investigation into some of the suspects.
Investigators have requested the extra days for Ayele Debela and Kebede Tefera. Both are known by the business community for their lending at high interest.
Currently, the authority is broadcasting on state-owned television (ETV) requesting evidence on Ayele and the other six individuals found in the lending business.
After hearing the complexity of the investigation, the court granted 14 extra days of investigation on Ayele and 12 days on Kebede Tefera.
But the court dropped the investigators request to keep Ayalew in custody until the prosecutor files the charge and instead granted bail to the Ayat chief.
The authority began its operations early this Ethiopian fiscal year, focusing on top bracket taxpayers. Post auditing, the first wave of the operation uncovered over 500 taxpayers engaged in manufacturing, import and export businesses who owed arrears.
The authority requested over 700 million birr in unpaid taxes from the last three years.
The second wave targeted jewellery shops and spare part importers who are registered as Value Added Tax (VAT) payers, but were apprehended a month ago while selling goods exclusive of VAT. Most of the VAT evaders are currently in court.
Though the authority has completed its restructuring and commenced its serious law enforcement measures on the country’s major taxpayers, it is unable to reach the 22.4 billion birr revenue collection target for the last 10 months. Its actual performance was to collect a total of 19.5 billion birr.
- By Yohannes Anberibr | Capital Ethiopia
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Ethiopia’s Revenue and Customs Authority operation to get back millions of birr in tax arrears from private businesses has resulted in chaos all over the city. A few weeks back the taskforce set up to enforce the collection requested companies to submit documents describing their purchases of imports, local purchases and local sales for the past three years.
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